Australian Racecourse Protects Administrative Areas with XS4 Access Control

Card based electronic locking and access control system provides Moonee Valley racecourse with simple and secure access for staff and visitors to its office areas

Moonee Valley racecourse is one of the busiest horse racing venues in Australia and is located just 6 km from Melbourne's Central Business District. Hosting thoroughbred horse race meetings and many functions and events, it is home to the Moonee Valley Racing Club's flagship event the "Tatts Cox Plate" which is Australasia's premier weight for age race.

As one of Australia's premier sports locations, the challenge is to balance the need to create an open, comfortable and secure environment for staff and visitors, while ensuring that people and equipment are protected from the threat of theft and vandalism.

To achieve this the club is upgrading security arrangements in its office and administration areas and Salto Systems have been awarded the contract to remove the existing mechanical key system and replace it with a modern fully integrated XS4 access control solution which includes 4 on-line 'Hotspot' wall reader points, and over 40 stand alone locks using Mifare RFID staff ID cards.

'As specialists in the field of access control systems, the Salto solution was ideal for Moonee Valley Racing Club' comments Jason Knowles from JAB Solutions, the local authorised Salto dealer carrying out the installation.

'Working in consultation with MVRC we designed a highly secure and flexible networked access control system to meet all of the requests of the club. The advanced system design incorporates XS4 electronic mortise locks with WRM9001 wall readers and CU50ENSVN controllers that can provide club management with audit trail information and lock battery status without having to visit all the doors in the building,"

Brian Masters, Manager - Operations at Moonee Valley Racing Club agrees. "It's important to us that our administration areas at the racecourse are secure. Our existing mechanical keyed system had become increasingly costly to maintain, with regular rekeys required, and it did not give us the flexibility or control we wanted.

We decided the time had come to replace it with a more modern system that could give us full audit trail controllability and increased security, especially on race days, as well as the ability to restrict staff and contractor access via time and door based control.

The selection of the new access control system will give us this capability as well as the ability to update, restrict or deny access to any lock remotely. This gives us unmatched flexibility and a secure environment, so choosing Salto has been an excellent investment decision."

Scott Fraser, Salto Area Development Manager, Australia, says 'We are thrilled to be awarded this exciting opportunity to secure one of Australia's foremost sporting venues. The XS4 system together with its Salto Virtual Network (SVN) technology provides 90% of what the club would get from a fully wired online system but at a fraction of the cost.

It uses distributed intelligence in the locks and cards to manage their access control requirements in a secure and comfortable way whilst simultaneously eliminating any potential problems with key control.

The 'smart' ID cards build up 'on-card' audit trails through normal use giving complete control over access and enabling them to track the movement of staff and visitors through both the off-line and on-line parts of the system if required. This enables a complete access profile of each individual to be established and updated as necessary at the 'Hotspot' wall readers.

It can also programme keys (Mifare RFID cards) to allow access to specific rooms or areas within the club for selected periods only, with the doors auto locking at pre-specified times as required. And if key security is breached due to the loss of a key card, it can be instantly deleted from the system without the need or cost of rekeying or changing locks - saving the club time and money."